Perseid Meteor Shower Poses Minimal Risk to Spacewalking Astronauts

The Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight, promising
dazzling fireball displays to lucky skywatchers, but the cosmic rain of space
rocks hasn?t endangered space station astronauts during their spacewalk repairs
this week, a NASA scientist says. In fact, the meteor shower may give the
astronauts a show too.

Astronomer Bill Cooke, a meteor expert with NASA's
Meteoroid Environments Office, said the Perseid
meteor shower adds a small amount of risk to astronauts on
spacewalks (about 15 percent), but the chances of being hit by a tiny meteoroid
from the shower are slim.

"The risk is still below the risk posed by orbital
debris and other factors," Cooke told SPACE.com from the Marshall Space
Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

Currently, there is a 1-in-300 chance of a piece of
orbital debris damaging the space station or hitting a spacewalking astronaut.
Compared to that, the slight risk increase from the Perseids is negligible.

A meteoroid about 1 millimeter in size is large enough to
damage an astronaut's spacesuit during a spacewalk, Cooke said. But NASA
spacewalk planners take the micrometeorite environment into account when
scheduling excursions, he added.

There are six astronauts living aboard the International
Space Station; three Americans and three Russians.

The crew is in the middle of a challenging set of four
spacewalks to repair
the space station's cooling system. One of two vital ammonia
coolant pumps failed July 31 and station astronauts are tackling the tricky job
of replacing the oven-sized part with a spare. They performed spacewalks on
Saturday and Wednesday, with the next one set for Monday.

If the space station astronauts are lucky, they may be
able to see meteors from above as they soar 220 miles (354 km) above the
Earth's night side. In the past, astronauts have been able to record video of
meteors from space during shuttle missions.

"You can definitely see meteors, and it's kind of
cool," Cooke said.

This
sky map shows where to look to see the meteor shower. Skywatchers
on Earth can use SPACE.com's planet
alignment map to find and identify planets that are
appearing together at the same time as the meteor shower.

During the Perseid meteor shower, the Earth is pelted by
remains of the Comet Swift-Tuttle as the planet passes close to the comet's
orbit. Material left behind by the comet rams into the Earth's atmosphere
during the pass at about 37 miles per second (60 km/second), creating an annual
show of "shooting
stars" every mid-August.

One of the reasons the Perseids don't post a major risk
to astronauts on the space station is because, astronomically speaking,
astronauts are rather small, Cooke said.

"When you look up in the sky, you see about 10,000
square-kilometers," Cooke said. "An astronaut's surface area is about
1 square-meter, he's not a very big target."

The space station, too, is small compared to the entire
night sky, Cooke added. Still, the $100 billion International Space Station is
the largest spacecraft every built in space and has a main truss as long as a
football field. It can easily outshine Venus on clear nights and be seen by the
unaided eye.

Cooke plans to stay up all night tonight to observe the
peak of the Perseid meteor shower. The Marshall Space Flight Center is planning
to stream live views and from its all-sky cameras in Alabama and Georgia via
the Internet, he added.